Teacher fired over teen pregnancy Facebook flap

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I hope you’re going to like this column, but I really hope you’re going to like it on Facebook.

Anyone with a job and a propensity to post things that cross the line — any line, anywhere — on that site will want to read this.

It’s a doozy, a cautionary tale, a sad story about inappropriate behavior taken to inappropriate levels.

The moral? Stay classy, San Diego. In real life and on social media.

Meet Jenn Gutterud. This married woman, Chargers fan and registered nurse has a Facebook page that includes a post titled “10 Reasons to Love a Nurse.” At No. 10 is: “Hit the right button, and I’ll come quickly.” There’s also a picture of a Chargers cheerleader’s wardrobe malfunction on her page.

Now meet Coriann Ulrich. She has a 19-month-old son, a general equivalency diploma and a history of part-time jobs that includes substitute teaching. In other words, she’s a single mother who can’t afford to become unemployed.

Yet Ulrich is out of work now because Gutterud was offended by a series of her Facebook posts. You won’t believe what she wrote — or how Gutterud got her fired. But here’s the wildest part: Gutterud lives in San Diego, and Ulrich lives in tiny Moses Lake, Wash., 1,200 miles away.

Their only connection? Their computers.

“She’s completely destroyed any name that I have in this town,” Ulrich said. “I don’t even know this woman.”

I think you’ll agree: It’s one thing to be disciplined at work for a social media post you made from your home computer, but it’s something else to lose your job over it. And it’s something else altogether to lose that job because a stranger in another state took it upon herself to email your written comments to your employer and the local newspaper, as Gutterud did.

Let that sink in. Big Brother? Turns out there’s a Big Sister, too.

Twenty years in journalism, and I’ve never received an email like the one I got Monday. That’s when someone emailed me a link to the Washington newspaper article. It left so many questions: Why did these women do what they did? Is this what we’ve become as a society? Are you kidding me?

Ulrich was easy to reach and eager to talk. We’re now Facebook friends.

She sent me a copy of the post that wound up getting her fired, a screen grab of the exchange it prompted with Gutterud, and the termination email from the human resources manager of the Moses Lake School District.

So what did she post? On a public Facebook page titled, “I hate teen moms,” which she said she stumbled on when a friend “liked” a post on it, she wrote: “TO ALL THE TEEN MOMS BITCHING ON THIS PAGE!!!!”

Ulrich continued: “First off in this day an (sic) age there should be no such thing as an unplanned pregnancy!!! there is condoms, birth control, and the plan B so if you females aren’t utilizing that than you are all dumb as ----!!!!”

Later she added, “I ------ all through high school and because i was ‘RESPONSIBLE’ I never got knocked up!!!”

There was more, but you get the point. Honestly, if I were a parent in the district, I’d want her disciplined. But she shouldn’t have lost her job because someone she didn’t know went snooping around on social media.

She told me she was only trying to explain that responsibility at a young age helps prevent unwanted pregnancies. She cited her free-speech rights and the fact she wasn’t working when she made those comments on Facebook. She admitted that her remarks were vulgar and wrong, and she apologized to anyone she disturbed. Everyone but Gutterud, it seems.

Gutterud was so offended that she directed some comments of her own at Ulrich on that Facebook page. She wrote, “My only hope for mankind is that you remain infertile,” and “Why don’t you throw yourself off of a cliff?”

Then, Ulrich said, Gutterud threatened to contact her employer and the local paper. Ulrich said that comment was subsequently deleted, but that Gutterud followed through because the newspaper communicated with her — and the school district fired her from a job she’d held off and on for two years.

The strange truth is that the only way Gutterud knew how to reach Ulrich’s employer or local newspaper was that Ulrich’s occupation and hometown were public on her Facebook profile, even though her overall page wasn’t. And the only way Ulrich could find any of Gutterud’s photos that she considered inappropriate was that the images were public, even though Gutterud’s overall page wasn’t.

The outcome? Both women’s dirty laundry is being aired in public instead of buried in a stack of social media posts, and Ulrich’s firing is anything but confidential.

Ulrich’s termination email reads in its entirety: “The Moses Lake School District no longer needs your services as a substitute paraeducator. The statements posted on Facebook do not fit our Core Principles. The statements were inappropriate and profanity was used. It’s important for our staff members to be good role models for our students and community.”

In the end, that’s what this is all about. Setting an example.

I say Gutterud went way too far. And I can only guess that she might agree because she took her Facebook page down and never got back to me this week.

Before she closed her account, I sent her several private interview requests via Facebook and left a voice mail message for a family member in town. Then, I sent a final unsuccessful query to her husband on Facebook.

The questions stand: Does Gutterud see herself as a role model? Do you?